The 2024 Reds Caravan made its traditional stop at the Maysville Event Center on Monday, January 22. The members of the Caravan who visited Maysville were, from left, Chase Petty, Edwin Arroyo, Jay Allen II, Brent Suter, Corky Miller, Brian Giesenschlag and John Sadak. Absent from the photo was Shawn Pender. (Photo by Mark Carpenter)
By Mark Carpenter
People’s Defender
Optimism abounds in Reds Country for the upcoming 2024 baseball season and the organization once again began to fuel that optimism with the annual Reds Caravan, featuring current and former Reds players, top minor leaguers, broadcasters, front office staff and mascots making appearances at locations throughout Reds Country.
An annual stop for the Caravan, in fact one of the very first stops, is at the Event Center in downtown Maysville, the stop sponsored by WFTM Radio. This year’s Maysville stop featured newly acquired reliever Brent Suter, minor leaguers Jay Allen II, Chase Petty and Edwin Arroyo, Vice President of Player Development Shawn Pender, former Red and fan favorite Corky Miller, plus mascot Mr. Redlegs.
The recently signed Suter should be a valuable addition as a left-handed arm in a Reds bullpen that has more depth now than in past seasons and being a Cincinnati native, he is more than excited to put on the hometown uniform.
“The Reds were the first team to reach out to me in free agency and that got my family real excited,” explained Suter. “The market has just been super slow so we kept waiting and things came together a couple of weeks ago. There were other teams interested in me and again it was a waiting game and we were afraid if we waited too long the Reds might move on to someone else. So my wife and I talked and we decided, ‘You know what, let’s just go ahead and sign.’”
A word that has been tossed around frequently in the offseason around the 2024 Reds is “depth”. It’s almost like the team is a big jigsaw puzzle with a lot of pieces, maybe too many pieces. The question is how do they all fit? Vice-President of Player Development Shawn Pender addressed that question.
“There’s a balance with this team right now, we’re so young with a lot of areas that are still unknown,” said Pender. “But the balance is going to be the manager’s job (David Bell) and I think a lot of it will be figured out in spring training and one of the things we haven’t had in awhile and the organization has done a great job with is the team’s depth. You just don’t know how much depth you really need in a long season. People are going to get hurt, players will have slumps and personal issues, that’s just part of it. Having the depth will really help us when those things do occur and there is still the potential for more moves to be made before Opening Day.”
The Reds are blessed with an abundance of young talent and many of them had breakout seasons in 2023. Who might be the breakout stars for 2024?
Pender continued, “That’s a tough question but that’s the beauty of our situation in that we really do have more quality players than we’ve ever had. I think Arroyo has a chance to really have a great year after the way he ended the year in AA and we hope Chase (Petty) can come back strong from some injuries, At the major league level, the obvious ones, but look at what happened wit TJ Friedl. I always thought that Friedl was going to be a good player but look what a surprise he was and I hope we get a couple of more surprises like that. Last season a lot of our young guys, like Elly de la Cruz, just were hit with fatigue, they had just never played that much before. They got tired, they struggled. In Elly’s case, people don’t realize just how young he is. He’s only been with the organization 3-4 years, he would actually be a college senior. The pitching depth is the key. In the past we’ve always had to go to Plan D instead of a Plan B and now we have to continue to develop options.”
“The team is fun to watch and part of that is because they are so athletic. The game is changing now- the triples, the stolen bases, the athleticism on defense- it’s a game that is much more fun to watch.”
Warmer days and the 2024 season are just around the corner, with pitchers and catchers reporting to Spring Training in February and Opening Day on March 28 with the Washington Nationals visiting the Queen City.
